WHY WE TAKE RISKS
EVEL KNIEVEL MUSEUM HUMANS ARE ineluctably drawn to doing stupid, dumb, silly things just for the hell of it. We slip into squirrel suits and jump off mountaintops (no thanks); we climb 2000-foot-tall radio towers and hang by one finger just to get an Instagram shot (not for me). We gamble our rent money on the stock market from our phones. That’s not the sort of risky behavior I’m drawn to. Nor is risk theater. A few years ago, I entered an autocross in Southern California (in a Mercedes SLK), and I overheard the race marshal reassuring someone’s nervous spouse, “We minimize actual risk and maximize apparent risk.” In other words, it’s mostly theatrical. Getting into a car has by nature an added element of risk—especially when compared with sitting…